Ricotta Pancakes with raspberries

I made lasagna recently, and bought a huge tub of lasagna to do so.  I had about half the tub left and was looking for something to do with it when I saw a Facebook post from my dear old friend, Karina, who mentioned eating lemon ricotta hotcakes.  Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner of what to do with the leftover ricotta!

I hunted down a recipe for ricotta pancakes last night and modified it based on the contents of my cabinets.  I put in some almond extract to serve as a proxy for the lemon flavor, because it actually does a good job with the sweet-sour senses (and is very potent -- a little bit goes a long way).  Then, I topped with about 3/4 of a pint of raspberries because they are the best thing in this entire world.

So, tonight, J and I had ricotta pancakes and vegetarian sausages for brinner (breakfast for dinner, thank you Scrubs)!

Fluffy Ricotta Pancakes
made about 16 medium-sized pancakes

• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• pinch salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 eggs, divided  (If you need a primer: watch this short video)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• Maple syrup, powdered sugar, and berries to go atop (we used raspberries!)

Drain excess liquid from ricotta by setting it in a fine mesh strainer about 30 minutes before you start cooking.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl. 

Mix ricotta, milk, egg yolks, and vanilla in a separate bowl.

Beat the egg whites in an electric mixer until stiff and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients to the ricotta and milk mixture, whisking until just combined. Whisk in a small amount of the egg whites to lighten the batter, then fold in the remaining whites.

Heat a griddle over medium-high heat (I set it at 325 degrees F), and brush the surface with butter. Use a measuring cup (I used a 1/4 cup measure) to pour batter onto the griddle. Cook pancakes for about 3 or 4 minutes, then flip, cooking until both sides are golden brown.

Top with Maple Syrup, powdered sugar, and raspberries.

Pumpkin Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went to the Dexter Cider Mill yesterday with Chani, Kolby, and Ariane.  It was my first time at a cider mill since moving to Michigan a half decade ago, and apples, apple orchards, and cider mills are sort of a big deal around these parts.  This year, unfortunately, because of the hot, hot summer and crazy climate changes, Michigan lost 90% of its apple crops (and a large majority of its other fruit crops), so we're a little short on apples.  But, the cider mill was still a great time.

Photo by Chani Hodonsky

We went in for pumpkin donuts, and I got a cinnamon roll with apple cider glaze.  Of course, we got hot apple cider, and I also bought a jar of pumpkin butter.

Pumpkin butter.  I don't really know what to do with this stuff, aside from throw it on some toast (and maybe sprinkle some cinnamon on it?).  So, today, when I was deciding that I must have chocolate chip cookies, I had the idea of putting pumpkin butter in them!

In fact, I found a recipe for pumpkin butter chocolate chip cookies and followed it.

The recipe:

Step one:Melt 6 tbsp butter and let cool.

Step two.While butter is cooling, mix the following in a separate bowl:

• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour,  

• 1-1/2 tablespoons cornstarch, 

• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda,  

• 1/4 teaspoon salt, 

•  1/4 teaspoon of each: ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, 

• Plenty of cinnamon because its good.  (Yeah, I didn't measure this well, but just started shaking it into the bowl.)

Step 3.In butter bowl, mix: 

• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar 

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar 

• 1 large egg 

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

• 1/4 cup pumpkin butter

Step 4.Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients 

Step 5.Add semi-sweet chocolate, and white chocolate chips.  Lots of them.

Step 6.  Bake at 325 degrees F for 12-15 minutes

Update:  Husband names these the best cookies I've ever made.  I promptly reminded him of the Chocolate Buttermilk Chocolate Chip Cookies and he then couldn't decide which was better....

"There comes a day in your life when you wanna kick back, Straw hat on the porch when you old perhaps. Wanna gather your thoughts, have a cold one, Brag to your grandkids about how life is golden"

Saw this comic in the Sunday Detroit Free Press this morning and thought it'd be great to share it.  It works on so many levels, speaking to all of us throughout any life stage through which we're metamorphosizing, and speaking to me and my work in aging research.   

Hope you enjoy it, and remember to live every day with smiles and joy, even through your troubles and hardships.  Lean on your family, find bliss in your friendships, and bring joy to those who haven't found sunshine in a long time.  Life is good.

And, to recognize Nas who wrote the lyrics that title this post:

Just the two of us, building castles in the sky

I hope every girl, young lady, and woman in the world has a dad who believes in her as much as my dad believes in me.

(Unfortunately, it is not the case, and that makes me sad.)

I love you, Dad!

Don't do it for anything but the love of movement and location,

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This question takes on different answers at different phases in life.  When we're kids, we want to be cowboys or astronauts, and maybe that switches to artists or musicians, then melds to doctors and lawyers.  But, somewhere in there, we pick a path that may or may not be within the scope of a dream we once had.  For some it's more random than others.

Even in our 30s, have we found it?  My dad had a friend who finally realized, in his 50s, that he wanted to be a teacher.  So he went back to school.  And, quite frankly, good for him.  Dream big, and don't let yourself get caught up in a job that feels menial.

My career choices went something like this:

• Age 5:  I wanted to be an astronaut like Sally Ride.  I wanted to explore space and feel what it was like to float.  I wanted to look at the Earth from outside of the atmosphere, to take it all in.
• Age 10:  I wanted to be a pediatrician.  Not only that, I wanted to work internationally and save all the kids in Africa who didn't have access to health care... the ones they showed dying of starvation or infectious disease on TV.  I wanted to make a difference.
• Age 15:  I wanted to be a musician.  I wanted to spend my life composing songs that expressed emotions that others could feel understanding within.  I wanted to play at night clubs, alongside amazing drummers.  I wanted to be inspired with every note I played.
• Age 18-22, the college years:  I had no idea what I wanted to do anymore.  I wanted to be a chemical engineer, a musician, a philosopher...  I think there were a few other majors I explored, too. But I decided to major in math.  Why?  Because I liked math just fine, and I had taken a lot of math classes.  I threw in an extra major in statistics because it seemed more likely to get me a job.
• Age 22-26, the working years:  I still had no idea what I wanted to do, but I thought it might be something more like genetics or molecular biology.
• Age 27:  I wanted to be an epidemiologist.  I could save the world and the world's children, similar to my dreams at age 10.  I could do math/stats.  I could incorporate molecular biology.  I could work on different projects, with different collaborators, so my life would always keep me interested.

So, here I am.  An epidemiologist.  I've got an M.P.H. and am breaths away from a Ph.D. from one of the top schools in the nation.  But, even that doesn't just give me a career.  My pathway isn't just outlined.  This is fantastic, but means making decisions.  Do I teach or research?  Academia, government, or industry?  Do I continue building myself a little niche within the epigenetics of aging and chronic disease, or do I widen my net to include cardiovascular, genetics, molecular, and/or environmental epidemiology?  Do I direct myself toward computational biology and statistical genetics, or not?

What is it that I want to do, exactly?  Because there are jobs in all sorts of positions for which I can make myself a great candidate.  I can postdoc in order to explore and learn a little more about something, or I can jump into a career.  It's always exciting to see what the next step will be.

"We press play. Don't press pause. Progress, march on!"

For all the states that have ballot items involving hate and bigotry coming up in November, vote for love, acceptance, and equality.  Denying rights to our loyal American citizens sets us back in time to previous centuries and supports closed-mindedness and ignorance.

Let's join ranks with the nations who push the envelope to ensure all citizens are treated equally and benefit from the same rights.  Let's promote actions that will help to destroy ignorant stereotypes.  It is these ignorant stereotypes that destroy our youth through schoolyard and internet bullying.  And, this bullying has taken the lives of so many American youths.  We should all be proud to be the beautiful humans we are, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender.  And we should educate our children and each other that kindness wins.

"I will never miss you because of what we do, but what we are together"

I've had a lot of friends and acquaintances ask me, lately, how married life is going.  My initial answer is that nothing has changed.  And that's what I love about it.

But, in reality, it's gotten me thinking a lot about the constructs of relationships -- relationships I've been in, relationships in which I've been a confidant to either side or both, relationships I've observed.  And, someday, I'll go in depth about all of this, but tonight I'll just ponder upon "why marriage?"

A few years ago, J asked me if getting married was important to me.  My answer was "yes," but I couldn't really put a finger on why.  I'm not a religious individual, so marriage doesn't have the overtones of God that some people experience and find important when they wed.  I actually tend to believe that marriage is an institution that is far too controlled by the government.  Why should I be able to marry my committed partner, and have the rights and recognitions that go along with that, when I have good friends in serious relationships who can't share the same rights?  And, despite equality talks, why should I care about a signed slip of paper and a tax break?  Because of these things, I haven't really been able to get a good grasp on why marriage even matters to me.

After J and I got engaged, we started having talks about what sort of a wedding we wanted, and I think that's when it started becoming clear to me why I wanted to get married.  Ultimately, we decided to have a wedding with as many of our closest friends as could fit in the venue we chose.  And we chose a large venue.  We wanted our friends and family to help generate ideas and creations for our wedding.  J's best friend married us, while one of my best friends read a hilarious Neil Gaiman poem.  My mom created the decorations, and a whole slew of our friends and family helped to decorate the reception hall.  It was fantastic.  Every piece of our wedding had parts of us, our family, and our friends within it.  We wanted a wedding that would celebrate love in all ways -- the love we have for each other, the love we have for our friends, and the love that our families have shared with us for our lives.  It is our friends and families who helped us become who we are, and, thus, they are important to the construct of our love.

The act of getting married wasn't us saying that we were MORE committed to each other.  We already had made those promises to each other.
The act of getting married  wasn't to change our lives around for each other, because we accept that we are each individuals.  But, we already were willing to shift, concede, and compromise whenever necessary.
Marriage is, in a sense, a conversation of our promises with our loved ones, to let them in on our plans, our hopes, our dreams.  It is an open phone line for them to share theirs with us.  And, maybe that is why I knew that marriage was important to me: so no one ever questions my motives, my truths, or my devotion.

A couple weeks after we got married, J was playing with his ring and said to me, "It just feels right."  And that's why we got married.  Because the ceremony, the friends, the rings that we wear, the smiles we share -- they complete an invisible circle that creates our own little perfection.

From now on, when someone asks me how married life is going, I will remember that response: It just feels right.

We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save

I don't want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak

I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together

-Nikki Giovanni

Science.

True story.  

I like the way you work it, no diggity

I'd like to take a brief moment to take about the ideas we ABDers have about the job world.  

I have a few ladies in my lab who are in the same boat as I am.  We are all at the same place in our PhD program.  We all plan to defend within a few months of each other.  And, we've banded together to dream of alternate careers.  Erin P will be a baker, Erin W will be a florist, Steph will be a real estate lady, and I will be a musician.  Our adviser laughs when we mention it, but I think we're all at about the place where our fallback careers may have to take shape for us, because we need to maintain sanity in this insane world of academia that we willingly entered.

So, I've got just a couple of months before I plan to be done.  And, by "a couple," I literally mean 2... well, 2.5.  That's crazy.  So, I've been looking around to see what careers are available.  I've been going back and forth between academia and industry alternatives.  It so turns out that I am now qualified for far fewer careers than I was 3 years ago when I had only an MPH.  And, then, I was qualified for fewer careers than before, when I had two BS degrees.  You see, a lot of big pharma and academia careers want the degrees I have PLUS a whole lot of experience that I don't have in order to do the job I want to do.  So, to get experience, we get postdocs to prep for academia, and... I don't know how you get the experience they want for an industry position, because I haven't seen any good intermediate industry positions open up.

Now, working as a postdoc is pretty unappealing to me for a few reasons.  The biggest of those reasons is that my friends who have done postdocs have mostly been really overworked and underpaid.  They do just as much, if not more, work than they did during their doctoral education (meaning 12-16 hr days are a regular thing), and still only make about $35k.  It looks like the NIH has raised the postdoc pay a little bit, at least, so postdocs start at about $40k these days.  But, still...  living in Ann Arbor with a $40k job is doable.  Living in San Francisco with a $40k job really isn't.  Plus, I made far more than that when I only had a bachelor's degree.  I expect a little more money out of the deal when I've got 5 years of school and 2 degrees more than I used to.

Of course, this morning, I just submitted my CV for a postdoc position with NIH funding...  in San Francisco.  So, I can't say that I'm limiting myself to only $100k positions or anything.  But, I'd certainly prefer a great job that I love, that provides me constant fulfillment, that constantly teaches and pushes me, that lets me work from 9-5, and pays at least a little more than I made with an undergrad degree.  So, if any of you know of a job working as an epidemiologist with epigenetic and genetic data that fits those qualifications, let me know and I will take it... even if it's in Lincoln, NE or Lawrence, KS.

"And though my dreams all lead me nowhere, I won't forget my way back home"

Today, I was pointed to an interesting read concerning the distress of the privileged.  This article compares the 1998 movie Pleasantville to current events, discussing how the demands of the privileged overlook the justices of the minority.  If you haven't read this blog, I highly suggest giving it a look-see:
http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privileged/

That's really all I have to say about that.  It's a powerful article.  So, onto a cool song I stumbled upon on Spotify this evening:

"I admit that these answers that I seek
Are all to questions I’ve never known
But I pray to keep on looking for as long as I can roam
And when the world finally fulfills me
I will not forget my way back home"

"You've got to run like an antelope out of control"

We haven't gotten very far with opening wedding presents yet.  However, I have to give a shout out to Wheels and Nancy for delighting us with sponsoring an elephant in our name. 

This is Mutara, the elephant they chose for us to sponsor:

Mutara is awesome.  I was reading through the [Elephant] Keeper's Diary for the month of June and have picked up that she is well-respected and loved, and also very much the peace-keeper of the bunch.  She breaks up fights, and, when other elephants are left behind, she goes to look for them.  She watches over her elephant friends.  I love her.

Alice and Andrew...  Awesome.  Simply awesome. 

Meet me at the altar in your white dress / we ain't gettin' no younger, we might as well do it

So, we got hitched over the weekend.  It was fantastic.  I've never been to such an awesome party in my honor.  I'm still waiting for all of my mom's pictures, and, of course, the professional photographer's shots, too.

Here are a couple shots from our friends' Facebook pages that sum up the day nicely:

Our ceremony was short and sweet.  J's best friend Bill came from San Francisco to be our officiant.  He provided an awesome humor to the ceremony.   One of my best friends, Kate, did a fantastic reading by Neil Gaiman called "The Day the Saucers Came."

My wedding and engagement rings, engraved and etched 3-dimensionally.  Further, lines from the ee cummings poem, "i carry your heart" are engraved along the inside.

 Here we are with J's cousin Jamie and aunt Mollie.

The Ben Daniels Band provided hours of fantastic music during the course of the evening.  Everyone really loved them.

Here is a fantastic picture with some of my favorite Ann Arbor girls, Sam, Sauce, Kolby, and Ariane.  I love this picture so much!

And, here we are... looking at you.

We had a fantastic day, and we are so blessed with many amazing friends and family members who gave us so much help getting the wedding ready to go, and provided us support and love through every step of our journey so far.  We have got to be about the luckiest people in the world to be surrounded by so much love.

I want to give a special shout out to our vendors who made it such a fun and unique day:

• Standard Pizza Co., Grand Rapids, MI.  They made the best wood-fired pizza and didn't object at all to traveling across the state to get to our event.  They were super easy to work with, and really nice, and went out of their way for us over and over.
• Sayklly's Candy, Escanaba, MI, made the favors and such fun purple boxes.  We.... we didn't even get any because our guests managed to scavenge all of the extra boxes, including the ones at our place-settings.  I can only assume they were awesome.  Jim at Sayklly's was so personable, as one would expect a UPper to be. 
• Abracadabra, Ann Arbor, MI provided us such wonderful and special rings that they designed after understanding what we wanted.  They turned out perfectly!
• Plum Market, Ann Arbor, MI.  Allie, the catering manager, was super easy to work with and gave us exactly what we wanted.  She was super great.
• Ashleigh Nesmith, our wedding consultant.  She worked so hard to help to give us the best and easiest day possible, and she is such a doll to work with.  Please hire her for your event -- she is SO worth it.  (Email me for her contact info.) 
• Jesse Reyelts, Minneapolis, MN.  Jesse is licensed in cosmetology and is excellent with hair and make-up.  Luckily, she's my cousin, so she offered to make my life easy and do those things for me.  She did an amazing job, and I got compliments all night about how gorgeous my hair was.
• Sharpe Contrast Photography, South Lyon, MI, provided us a fantastic price for a great engagement shoot, and a lot of attention during our wedding.  He was super fun to work with.
• Cobblestone Farms through the City of Ann Arbor, provided us with such a fantastic venue.
• Gwen's Cake Decorating and Etc., Saline, MI.  Though it drives me insane that she has the words "and etc." in her business name, she gave us EXACTLY what we wanted -- a unique cake, delicious cupcakes, and fun cookies.  Our guests complimented us time and again for having delicious sweets at the wedding.

I can't even tell you the help that my mom and dad provided before, during, and after the event, also. My mom and aunts made all of the decorations, and a whole slew of our relatives and friends helped set up the day of the event.

We are slowly cleaning up our house to get back to normal life, while also taking care of the name-changing and financial-organizing business. Married life isn't so bad!

Who'd-a-thunk that I would ever get hitched?!  :)

"You can make a plan, carve it into stone; Like a feather falling that is still unknown"

I'm going to start by dedicating this post to Michael Dishaw, a wonderful mid-20-something with a layer of serious intensity underneath a sweet smile and genuine niceness.



Death.  The impending doom for all of us.  Sometimes it takes us by surprise, and sometimes after years of wearing down on us with pain and sadness preceding it.  Sometimes it takes our babies, who barely had a chance to open their eyes and experience the love in their mother's touch, and sometimes our grandmas, who have given 80-some years of love and compassion to everyone they encountered.  No matter who it takes, it leaves a storm of sadness in its wake. 

I've always experienced death in a way maybe strange, or maybe not.  One would never refer to me as a religious person.  I don't believe in a Heaven on the clouds where we frolic in happiness for all of eternity.  But, I do believe in the constant energy flow within the universe.  You all know the first law of thermodynamics, in simple terms: energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but can only be converted from one form to another.  Quite frankly, I think this is a beautiful concept because it truly ties us all to the universe in a grandiose way.  We will always exist in some form or another, and we have always existed.  And each of us are and are becoming quite the melting pot of energies within the vessels of our bodies.

This makes death mysterious to me because... yesterday, a person was here in our lives... and today, a person is gone.  It makes me sad for the people closest to the deceased because they have to condition themselves to a lifestyle that no longer involves phone calls and dinner dates with that person.  They end up with huge holes in their hearts.  In most cases, I am not sad for the deceased because, well, they are dead.  If they suffered, they are no longer suffering.  They are now the rainbows that smile through the rainstorms, and the flower buds waiting to bloom so beautifully in summer.  And, maybe, just maybe, there is a little part of that person in their newborn nephew's smile.

Back to the man mentioned at the start of this post.  This is the first time I've thought about death in depth as suicide has been the cause.  And, though it holds that my sadness is retained for the family, I am sad to think of a friend feeling so very, very alone that he went to such extremes.  This is where my traditional thoughts about not feeling sad FOR the deceased has been conflicting to me.  Because, I really am sad that life get to him so badly that its end was the only way he could think of to make it better.  He was a brilliant and talented guy, and an amazing ultimate frisbee player who was just nice.  Just really, really nice.  And, just like I would feel sad knowing that any of my friends was in a bad emotional state, I feel sad learning how extreme his was.

Alas, it seems that it all still holds.  He is not sad or hurt or down anymore, but he certainly has left a hole in the lives of so many who surrounded him.   And it's going to take a long time for those people to stop blaming themselves and pick up and move forward.  So, to the friends and family of our beloved Dish, I am terribly sorry for the loss of your son, brother, coach, mentor, or friend.

Death is so hard to wrap your mind around.  And, whether your believe in Heaven or a universal energy or just a vast nothingness, it doesn't change the idea that you never imagined a world without the physical presence of someone you've known or loved.

James Taylor wrote a song about a friend of his who committed suicide, but it doesn't matter how or when or why she died, his lyrics are brilliant and simple:

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Ghetto superstar

In youth, being a superstar in multiple areas (sports, academics, music, dance) is easy because "superstar" is a lenient term that just means "better than average."  And, being better than the average 10 year-old doesn't take much aside from a little devotion and concentration, since most 10 year-olds are too flighty to devote their time and energy toward much, aside from memorizing Justin Bieber song lyrics. 

Being older redefines "superstar" as an expert.  Quit frankly, it's hard to be an expert at more than one thing.

I am having this thought right now as I'm considering my studies.  How does one become a superstar at their thesis research while simultaneously remaining well-rounded?  I have too much energy to sit in one place and read papers and write all day, so I have to get out and play sports (specifically, ultimate frisbee).  But, when I'm playing ultimate, I think about strategy and things and become critical and aware of expert strategy, and find holes in other strategies, so then my concentration goes that direction. 

Maybe I need to find a sport that takes less thought.  Like running:  Tie shoes.  Run until exhausted.  Go home.

Kid'n'Play

It was my birthday on Monday.  It was filled with love and joy, and relatives leaving me music-filled birthday greetings.  It was extraordinary.  (And, thank you all for putting smiles on my face!)

Juggles followed through as a great fiance and charmed me with dinner at Paesano's, including a delicious bottle of wine.  And he got me some fantastic gifts:

1. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, a book by Scott McCloud.  This was a fantastic gift since Juggles is a comic guy and, though I've tried, I'd rather read a novel.  I don't get how to read things with pictures, apparently.
2. A Fitbit Ultra: http://www.fitbit.com, which "tracks your everyday steps, stairs climbed, calories burned, and more, motivating you throughout the day."

This post is actually inspired by the Fitbit, so I'm going to get on with it....

The Fitbit is really cool.  I wear it on my person and it acts as a pedometer to record the number of steps I take, miles I walk, and stairs climbed.  It tells me the calories I've burned.  I can log my food intake to compare caloric intake vs. burn.  It tracks my sleep cycles and tells me how many times I wake up every night, giving me a score of sleep efficiency.  It tracks workouts to tell me the pace I'm walking/running and the minute-by-minute caloric and step detail.  It does a lot of cool things.

I've never before tracked calories.  It's a weird feeling.  I don't really care about what I eat because I've never struggled with my weight, so it's bizarre writing down what I'm eating and having a note, "Today you can still eat 600 more calories,"  or "You've consumed X mg of sodium."  It definitely makes me realize WHAT I'm eating though.

I've known for a long time that my diet isn't the best.  It's better than all Ramen and Mac&Cheese, as I consumed during undergrad, but I'm far from consuming many meals of fruits and veggies as I did growing up.  For instance, yesterday I went out to dinner and had beer cheese soup and margarita pizza.  Winning combination of a lot of dairy, fat, and carbs.  But, it sure did taste good.

Today, so far, I have consumed only 735 calories, but am already at almost 1300 mg of sodium! 

Here are some alarming facts about sodium brought to you by our lovely CDC:

• Americans eat on average about 3,300 mg of sodium a day.  
• About 90% of Americans eat more sodium than is recommended for a healthy diet. 
• Reducing the sodium Americans eat by 1,200 mg per day on average could save up to $20 billion a year in medical costs

from http://www.cdc.gov/Features/VitalSigns/Sodium/

Source: http://www.cdc.gov

Sodium is a slow killer. The sodium balance of the human body is regulated by our precious kidneys.  There's a delicate balance created by the kidney, because kidneys help to control blood volume and pressure, and regulate electrolytes.  So, as you can imagine, excess sodium over long periods of time can lead to chronic kidney disease and hypertension.  These just end up being expensive for the health care consumer, as they require lots of drugs, etc.



Above is a schematic of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, in case you're curious about how hormonal regulation fits in with this whole cascade of substances to regulate blood pressure and volume.  You can read more about it on your own.  I'd prefer to direct you toward humorous kitty-chemistry pictures instead, now. 

Source: http://icanhascheezburger.com/

If you could hide inside me, maybe for awhile, and I won't tell no one your name.

Over the last few months, I've slowly started to come to the realization that I'm going to have to make a decision on whether or not to change my last name when I get married.  This is a very strange thing for me, as I identify with being a "Lazarus."  It's a great last name, really.  And there aren't too many of us.  I've been a Lazarus for a few decades now and not being a Lazarus might make me feel a little less me-ish.

That being said, my mom kept her maiden name when she got married.  People have asked me if that was ever strange for me growing up, but I never thought so.  My mom is a strong, independent woman who loves my father very much, but was also well-established in her career when she tied the knot.  For her, getting married wasn't a fanciful, big ordeal.  It was just the next stage in her relationship with my father and neither of them equated that stage as one that was necessary for my mother to trade-in her identity that she'd worked for so long to develop to become a "Mrs."  No.  She belongs to no one but herself.  But she chooses to give her life and love to my dad, without that sense of "property" or whatever that goes along with a last name change. As a child, I never even realized that people might look at me as if I were the child of an unwed mother or divorced parents or anything like that, though, looking back, I'm sure people could have.  And, quite frankly, even if I were the child of divorced or unwed parents, whose business is that?  Right.  People's only business is that my parents provided me with love and attention, which they, of course, showered me with.

Plus, I grew up in a great and comfortable city where we didn't call parents "Mister and Missus."  Everyone went by first names.  There were JoAnne and Rich, Sylvia and Franklin, Lynn and Tom.   Last names were never a part of our naming conventions, so it was never a deal having a mom with a different last name.

Being an academic brings all sorts of other considerations to the forefront of this issue.  I'm not highly reputable or anything, but I'm a co-author on a handful of papers now and it would be a shame to disassociate those with myself by changing my last name.  I like the research that I did as a master's student.  It's very different from what I do now, but it's something that I would consider turning to as a career path, so being associated with those PIs may be great for my future career!

However, I know that it would be J's preference if I were to become a Zagel, though I know he won't push me either direction and, really, just wants me to be happy.  When we had first discussed the idea of marriage, I told him I'm not sure I'd change my last name, but our kids could surely have his last name.

Of course, there are a lot of other options.  I could change my last name officially, but still publish under my maiden name.  I could keep my maiden name as part of my name -- maybe as a middle name.  I could hyphenate (but I won't, because that's a lot of Z's for one last name!).  

Of course, there are pros and cons for all options.  All-in-all, I'm glad I have a fiance who isn't egotistical enough to feel that I should take his last name for whatever reason, and is placing that decision in my hands.

And, for fun, good music:

We are the 1980s / we are the Detroit lights

One thing that I learned after moving to Michigan is that techno is a product of Detroit.  Pretty effing neat.  I feel I should link to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) at this point in time.  Further, here's a UK tribute to techno with a metion of Detroit.

 

Sing song blue

As I was belting out the song "Poison" in the shower today, I realized that I should make a playlist of all the songs that are in my head when I wake up...  mostly because they are awesome (and random...)

Let's track this week so far: 

Monday:



Tuesday:



Wednesday:




You're welcome.

Should I just keep chasing pavements, even if it leads nowhere?

I'm quickly forgetting what it's like to have a life of any sort this semester.  On top the usual -- dissertation research, coursework, helping with grants, and the occasional lab project for another professor -- I'm now a graduate student instructor for an intro epid course with 200 students in it.  My weekdays seem to average about 12 hrs of work.  And my weekends are getting up there too.  I'm constantly exhausted and, somehow, constantly feel like I'm getting nothing done.

This weekend, I at least got the chance to run some errands in the middle of uploading and proofing lectures, working practice problems, and grading a gazillion homeworks.  I worked all day yesterday and a good chunk of today.  And, yahoo, I'm just right back in the mix of everything bright and early tomorrow morning.

This semester has made me realize more and more that I don't think I ever want to be a faculty member, as I think they might get less sleep than me.  Maybe... 




p.s.  My dog is crazy.  He just had a growling war with the couch while he was underneath it.

Recessive genes

I somehow managed to never know my blood type until now, at 31 years old.  I was at the doctor earlier this week and she suggested I get blood typed in case I want to reproduce at some point in time.  Of course, most Americans (85%) are Rh positive, so it shouldn't be a big deal.  But, in the case that I'm Rh negative and decide to have kids and Juggles is Rh positive, we could all implode with horrible cases of autoimmune stuff-n-things (or something) if we don't find out beforehand.  

Turns out I'm A- blood type.

This means I'm Rh negative, along with a small percentage of the U.S. population.

And Juggles is A+, meaning he's a typical Rh positive American.

Of course, both my my parents are Rh positive.  So, lucky me and my recessive genes!  Now I'll have to get injections of fuzzmonkeys in order to stop the implosion of autoimmune stuff-n-things if/when I have babies.